December 26, 2018

It Was Only a Matter of Time

The gig is up - the basement is no longer off limits to the kittens. Oh, not by choice, well not by MY choice anyway. I blame do myself though.

See, yesterday I was talking to Cop Car on the phone and was sitting at the top of the stairs (best reception area for long distance calls). To sit there I had the partially gate open, but I thought I had it blocked with my body. The last thing my mother got for conversation was this, "Spot, what the hell are you doing down there?" and the explanation of why it was a surprise. I'm assuming Spot went behind my back as I was leaning against the door frame.

I retrieved Spot and closed the gate and all was well. Until a while ago. I went downstairs to start a load of laundry. Shortly after coming back upstairs I saw Spot looking thru the gate on the wrong side. I assumed she had slipped by me as I was taking the laundry down the stairs. BUT, then when I went to change the wash to the dryer, I made extra effort to make sure no cats got thru the gate and the gate was closed. Coming back up the stairs, there was Spot. She turned back up the stairs and climbed the gate - argh!

The reason I blame myself is that she probably would not have climbed the gate if she hadn't gotten by me yesterday and got the lay of the land of what was on the other side. Rainey has not figured out the climbing part, but was trying to open the gate by sticking her paw thru and pushing/pulling while Spot was on the other side. Decided to just open the gate to keep it from being damaged.

Not happy as they are still small enough, and naïve enough to get into lots of trouble down there. But, don't want to put the door in place as it is a major PITA for the workings of the house. The bright side is that I should be able to transition them to using the litter boxes downstairs which does 2 things;

Keeps the smell down there when they do their business

I don't have to clean both morning and night (only one litter box upstairs for all 3 cats but there are two for downstairs),

Anyway, here is the culprit taunting Rainey as Rainey is reaching her paw thru

Rainey trying to figure it out - Spot is on the second stair down on the very left - she is descending so unless you know what you are looking for, you can't tell. Rainey always figures it out once Spot has shown the way (yes, Spot is usually the trouble starter), so now I have an open border house :).